Cornflakes Woodcock

          His name was Ulf, but I don't think too many of us knew that. We knew him as Cornflakes, Corn for short. He had been in SL, and then he found a true home in OSGrid, where he made things, and made visitors welcome not just by giving us a chance to see and own his creations, but with a sandbox where anyone could visit, collect, and build. 

          One look at his things would inspire anyone to create, whether it be your own invention or a little scene put together of Cornflake's creatures.

License to Jump

Hypergrid jumping is a bit like driving. Learning the basics and getting experienced requires a good amount of will power and humility, but the freedom it gives you makes it so worth while.

There are four ways to grid jump. The simplest, someone can just tp you - a 'personal chauffeur'; you can use a Landmark - a 'taxi', you can find a hypergate, which is a scripted portal to another grid - 'public transport' or you can use your Map, which is the equivalent of driving stick. You ought to learn how to do the last one, even if you rarely use the skill, because dude, you're not a noob, you ought to know how to read and write addresses, and it will help you grasp the overall sense of the hypergrid. Plus it's excellent practice to get your spelling and copy/paste skills up to scratch, which is good for your soul.

          The lovely little house on Ilha Magica is getting too small for our group - we were a whopping 15 yesterday, including such luminaries as Ferd Frederix (aka Fred Beckhusen), Pathfinder (aka John Lester), and Mal Burns. That's Mal with the top hat. There seems no logic to why some OSGrid avies were clouds - could it have been that some people had tp'd from regions using the new 0.8 release?
         Our destination was Nara's Nook, belonging to Nara Malone, Tina Glasneck, and Siobhan Muir. It's a classy, stable grid, a place for authors, poets, and people who love writing and imagination in general. They had put a lot of work into preparing for our visit, and we all appreciated it very much, a lagless, gorgeous group of sims full of interesting spaces and inspirational scenes.
When we arrived, I overheard John'Pathfinder' Lester asking Nara what a selkie was.
Nara.Nook: A selkie shifts shape between human and seal. When you wear the avatar you turn into a seal under water.
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: wants to grow up to be a selkie
Nara.Nook: thanks to the scripting magic of Fred Beckhusen. There are other shapeshifter avatars in our swamp. Those change when they fly - a Tardis, a turkey, and a butterfly.
Fuschia Nightfire's attachments survived the jump this time; she has a new strategy, don't bother wearing attachments when you jump, just wait and put them on when you arrive!

Nara's open sim experience has been a voyage of discovery.
Thirza Ember: When you started in SL did you ever imagine something like this would happen? a grid of your own?
Nara Nook: No, I didn't even want to know how to build, now I'm scripting. Open sim forced that.      

            You'll find a lot of NPCs on the grid, the writers use them to make the characters in their books come alive. It's one of many tools used to pollinate creativity. The Nook is a place where people with no previous virtual life can get inspired at a 3D level without being mocked. This non-mocking of noobs is against my religion, so I kept pretty quiet while the group murmured noob-supportive remarks.
 Nara.Nook: I started this grid so I could help other authors learn to use the metaverse in a safe place, something set up just for newbies, where no one makes fun when you get a box stuck on your head
Siobhan.Muir: Or hair to your hand
Miso Susanowa: *looks at Wizzy & giggles*
Nara.Nook: or a guy can comfortable ask why he suddenly has boobs
Mal Burns: ha - like earlier lol!

Nara.Nook: 99 percent of these members had never been in the metaverse before here. We bring them in and teach one on one.
Tuna Oddfellow: that's really cool
Pathfinder.Lester: So you really have to focus on having a good new user experience.
Talla.Slade: you've done a wonderful job Nara. You done yourself proud girl
Nara.Nook: I find the only way to do is is personally, it is too complicated to be automated. We meet here weekdays to encourage each other because writing is a tough and the support helps
Siobhan.Muir: Most people have their own project, Serene, but sometimes we get together for group projects like the interactive fiction we did a few months ago

Mal Burns: we were all noob once!
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: I like noobs, and if you take time with them, they become permanent residents
Nara.Nook: and even our SL transplants have a noob stage here.  If we want to grow, noobs have to realize we appreciate them and how hard this is
Mal Burns: metaverse needs noobs to continue to grow - fact!

Pathfinder.Lester: Here's a research paper from a while ago that I love. It basically proves that new user retention is critically dependent on getting them connected to people as soon as possible.
Nara.Nook: I was trying to teach someone to add our adress to the viewer the other night and it was not sinking in, and within a day they are hypergridding and making NPC - it took me a couple years to learn all that on my own.
Siobhan.Muir: It also helps that people feel comfortable asking question
Nara.Nook: Right, no question is unreasonable here
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: ty, Nara, this is a wonderful place.......and I love what you are doing.
PatriciaAnne Daviau: this place is really awesome
Pathfinder.Lester: Thank you again Nara. Not only is this place so creative, it sounds like you're giving folks a wonderful new user experience too. That's fantastic.
          It really is.

Safari Lite

Peace and Freedom

Lumiere Noir

           It was a funky day of DSKCHK and bluescreen warnings about kernels, and Singularity crashing after sixty seconds. The only sane solution seemed to be to get Firestorm, and deal with all the hassle an unfamiliar viewer might add to the chaos which is Safari Night. I never thought I'd even get to Ilha Magica, and when eight-thirty came around (11:30 SLT), the  sim was funky too, as the Safarinas began to arrive, Fuschia Nightfire, Wizard Gynoid, and Wizardoz Chrome. On top of that, I'd had some really sad news, but that's for another time. Grr. Ilha Magica wasn't going to work as a meeting point - and boo hoo! There were even special new posters in the little house!

          You're thinking, 'shame you didn't research the Firestorm built-in a/o - shame you swear by Singularity'. I was thinking the same thing, believe me, as I struggled with the Firestorm UI. 

          Since Ilha Magica was acting weird, Fuschia Wizardoz,and Wiz tp'd over to our first  destination, Cuteulala Park (OSGrid) along with  snow, Avia and gradually all the others - Nara, Serene, Alex, Mercalia, Han Held, and the lovely Sarah Kline. 

            Endora came too, just for a bit - she has an art show coming up soon, and was busy with that. So twelve took the tube ride, and visited the haunted house. 

          Here's the thing. Obviously it's easier to travel alone in open sim; you can do everything in your own time, and grid jumping is comparatively stress free. But it's nothing to the feeling of good companionship. It was especially nice to have Sarah with us, she kindly pointed out my mistake at attributing the haunted house Cuteulala Artis, who instead is the mastermind - or should that be mistressmind? - behind the rollercoasters, along with the scriptalicious Takni Miklos. I think the Haunted house is by Eryn Galen. Sigh - so much easier to tell who made a prim object - you just click on Edit and voila! But it's a groaning, laughing, brilliant horrorfest on Recreation Plaza, home of the OSGrid Speedbuild, the smaller green sim south of Cuteulala Park, and a perfect foil to the exhilaration of the Big Wheel and the flume. 

          Check out the map - the Park is huge.There is fun to be had for hours here, but we had an appointment not to be missed, with Lumiere Noir, on sim Glow, part of Sean Emerald's Sanctuary Grid. 

          Famed for his Ivory Tower of Primitives in SL, Lumiere's been in open sim for many years. I first met him when we were both on Craft grid, and I'm kind of proud and humiliated to say that he taught me to use the 'Select Texture' button in Edit. I'd been in vws for 3 years by then, and had never noticed it.

           Lumiere and his partner Tosha Tyran are getting into mesh, watching Blender tutorials together and figuring it out, gradually, The buildings on the sims we visited were all by Tosha, but Lumiere, whose color changing avie was made up of about 5 or 6 different mesh shapes, also shared some of his own recent creations with us. 

          As usual, not all our attachments made it from OSGrid; since snowbody's whole outfit was made of attachments, he made quite an impression. Clothes were provided: his idea of 'traveling light' was a wee bit too light! Serene has the very sensible idea of not wearing a bald base, to avoid the 'just out of chemo' look that I was sporting, on everyone else's viewers. Fuschia has a robot look going on, so she's always elegant, and Wizzy's hair must be superglued on or something, it follows her everywhere.

           Lumiere talked to us about his choice to come to open sim, about the Ivory Tower, and its griefing problems in SL, (who knew anyone would grief a place like that? Apparently they do, and in quite sophisticated and horrible ways) about the joys and headaches of coming to grips with Blender in its complexity, and in terms of the loneliness that builders experience when using off world programs. Serene made a great suggestion, to combat the isolation of blending, she listens in to inworld Spoken Word performances.

Lumiere showed us some of his blends, some buildings, a table, and this pencil. That's when the trouble began. Somebody moaned about this blog being slow to load because of all the photos, so I have put the worst of them on Flickr; let's just say ...

          ...it was all Wizzy's fault, and Avia survived suffocation, but only just. 

          Lumiere's answer to the question - why open sim? - was succinct. The peace and the freedom of open sim. Freedom to create things not possible in SL, due to size and prim number restrictions, and the peace and quiet essential to getting on with your work. 
          Speaking of work, Tosha Tyran's builds here are amazing! One short visit is not enough. The quality textures loaded instantly, even in Ultra graphics. A little bit of sim-to-sim tp trouble, but we got around that by using our Map. 

          The Taj Mahal is just one piece by Tosha that we admired on Sanctuary Grid. I'm not saying that anyone peed in the pool, but the water did get warm at one point, and Fuschia looked a little pink... nuff said. 

          By the time we were ready to set off on our last stop (Wizzy's right, the 3 hour safari is a little too long) we were down to about six travelers. The destination was PM Grid. The LM everyone got worked just fine for Wizard and Serene, and eventually snow and I got there, but it was late and laggy, and Bob Wellman's PMGrid deserves a more thorough visit, a dedicated safari.That'll be upcoming - will you be joining us? I hope so!

Safari goes South

          People keep coming back. And new people joining. HG Safari is about friends and patience and sure some art also but mostly about the amazing possibilities opening up for creators and community, free and independent of SL. It is like standing on the edge of the prairie. Yes, it's not easy. You do have to think your way around the bugs, and compromise, and not mind if your hair gets stuck on your butt occasionally. But it is fun. A world of optimism and missing attachments.
          We met on Ilha Magica again. After weeks of thinking about it, I actually put up some freebie clothes. 

Nothing fancy or even meshy, just a few shirts and skirts. Where Pathfinder's group had a camp fire and dealt with real open sim news, we sit on the furniture and make jokes. But Wizard Gynoid asked a pertinent question.
Wizard Gynoid: why is it that every world's search works differently?. 
Thirza Ember: because every grid owner makes what they want of the material available. Each version of Open Sim is like this massive catalog of bits... the main stuff obviously you don't mess about with, but things like partners, Search, Map, they are extras, in a way. So when you set up the grid, you decide which bits are more important to you. Since it's a massive number of plug ins, everyone chooses the bits they care about most... 
          You may have a better answer than that - put it in Comments, it would be great to hear.

Star Struck Safari

Thirza Ember: Hypergridding is about weird shit. 

Our main purpose is to experience the weird shit together.

Fuschia Nightfire: weird shit is good

Wizard Gynoid: i love drinking my recycled urine. ;-)

Miso Susanowa: THE SPICE MUST FLOW

Ten of us, there were, this week on the Safari. We 'assembled' for about half an hour, at Ilha Magica on OSGrid, just to try to make sure we didn't miss anyone. Of course, I bet we did, but as you probably know, if you IM us in Facebook, we will wait for you, or send you our hg address, and help you figure out how to use the address to hypergrid, if you're a novice. The key thing is to say beforehand you are thinking of coming.

Romenna on PM Grid

Mercalia Beck, who has a Travel Centre at Wright Plaza, and Kosmos Unlimited and Alex Zed were among the newcomers to the group, though not to hg in general. When there are such different time zones represented, from Australia to America to Europe, it's impossible to find a time that suits everyone, but we appreciate so many people fitting in with the current arrangements. First off, we all try to friend each other so that if hypergridding hoodoo fails us we have the option of attempting a personal TP. 

Opensim is full of people, it's just that most of them are busy. However, there are socials and meetups happening, like the one Lani Global organizes. We also heard Arcadia Asylum was on the grid, *starstruck!!* but it didn't seem right to bug her while she was building. So we left her alone. Or most of us did. Wizzy attempted to TP to her location but the sheer quantity of sims in the sandbox where Arcadia was working seems to have ejected Wiz right back to Ilha Magica. 

So near, safari

This week's safari was a bit of a change of pace. We met on Miguel Rotunno's sim, Ilha Magica, in OSGrid, and there were about 8 of us, which was a nice number - some cool new friends from Kitely were there, and even SaveMe Oh popped over to wish us well on our travels. We have plans for a machinima competition in open sim, I hope she and many more of you will join in, more about that in coming weeks.

Ilha Magica house

We really lucked out with destinations this week. Our first stop was Francogrid. Their Fest'Avi was last week, and they have launched a new range of full perm avatars,with lots of weird and wonderful looks for you to try. 

Francogrid arrival

Praline B, Cherry Manga, Phil, Gill, Cendres and all the guys and gals of Francogrid interrupted their weekly meeting at LeVillage to come over to sim Avatar and welcome us. It was immensely heartwarming. There are about 20 avies so far, and the plan is to add to the collection, so by next year, as Cherry said, there will be twice as many! It still very slightly a work in progress, not all the outfits were complete when she unpacked them, Wizard Gynoid tells me, so once you're grabbed your freebies, check in with the folks over there if you're missing a wing or a wingnut, and I'm sure they will sort you out.

From Francogrid to OSGrid, managed to lose a few Safaristas in the process, but bear in mind, our meeting time is the lunch hour/early afternoon in the US, not an ideal moment for many, and we much appreciated them joining in if only for part of the tour. We went to meet Avia Bonne on her sim DutchMountains. It's important not to add a space between the two words, or you may never get there! In fact quite a few people had problems jumping back to OSGrid. Your alternatives are, I suppose, two. Either move to a different sim within grid you're on, and try again or just log out and back in again, in which case you'll find yourself back on your home grid.

Avia's shops put the lie to the rumor that there's little or no mesh in open sim, or that you can't be a 'real' virtual designer unless you sell your stuff. She has everything from menswear to houses, dresses to sofas, (unmissable is Garry Beaumont's wall of manly accessories!) and it is all up for grabs. But please, don't actually grab the items! Take a copy, not the original. 

Duh, I know, seems obvious, but sadly, she keeps coming inworld only to find creations are missing from her stores, because someone took the shop 'original' by mistake. If you do use her creations, remember they took hours - even days - to make, so drop her an IM to say thanks. 

That's the open sim way. If you're not on someone's friends list, or are from another grid, you can still IM a person by clicking Edit on one of that person's prims, and in General, click on the Profile of the creator, then IM them. 

 Take a moment to pan away from the shops and see the full extent of her bravura. The sim has more than freebies to share!

 Avia has been in open sim, she said, for about 5 years, and has a huge portfolio of work on her regions, lots of Steampunk, plenty of fashion. Her generosity extends beyond the many free items she has made available, she's always quick to praise her fellow builders. 

Avia suggested we visit her neighbor Kathje Kitaj's sim, Hill Valley, based on the movie Back to the Future. The entire build is basically all mesh. It is amazing!

Next stop, the grid created by Vanish Seriath and his dear wife, El. The name is TGIB; it's pure poetry. The Grey In Between, The Good In Bad, The Ground Is Below, and a host of different meanings. The regions are poetry too, a tribute to the spirituality and charm of both halves of this lovely couple. All the anxiety of grid hopping seemed to melt away, helped perhaps by a quick dip in the lake.  Vanish explained about OpenSim Creations, which is of course an online 'community shop' for open sim items. I notice they also have a monthly building challenge, how neat! Vanish explained to me what a Var is - turns out you can have a variable sized sim now. I know, right? These crazy scientists! 

It was also a joy to listen to Miso Susanowa, who has been in vw's for just about forever, chatting about the early days of virtual living with DJ Phil and SSM back on Francogrid, as well as talking about the wonderful skin resource that Eloh Eliot put on line, oh centuries ago. Lag is probably the biggest headache in hypergridding. So many proxies, servers, signals, programs. It helps to have a second computer for Facebook or Skype or anything heavy that you need to keep open. Taking Ultra photos is a sudden pit of treacle. Inexplicably, people suddenly are reduced to a name tag and a head of Ruth hair.

 Fuschia looks invariably gorgeous in my viewer, I think it has a crush on her, but when Vanish Seriath, who had been along with the group from the start, took us to TGIB his upper torso disappeared. Does it matter? Not really, on the whole. There's a sense of being on the edge of a great ocean of progress and possibility in Open Sim, a world where people are in it not to make money but for the love of the game, the love of creating. 
Luckily everyone in the group is good at getting pictures, and a special shout-out to the lovely Wizardoz Chrome, who always takes such great shots. We now have a Flickr group too, for those who want to join there.
What about if you don't even have an open sim avatar yet? Don't let that hold you back. Sure, there is going to be an initial moment in which you'll feel dorky, or even invisible. You will crash, I can't lie. But we are in no rush, we'll wait while you come back on line, we keep FB chat open so you can send an SOS and get the hg address of where we are, in real time. Let me stress, it's not just me. You can also contact Wizard Gynoid, Wizardoz Chrome, or Fuschia Nightfire if you need help.  
Next week - the future, today! Join the Facebook group and page, both called HGSafari, if you'd like to know more.

Safari Starts

This week was the third outing of HG Safari, a new group nothing like Pathfinder's fabulous HGAC, which always seemed to work smoothly. The idea behind Safari is very different too: his Hypergrid Adventurer's Club mostly attracted seasoned, or semi-seasoned, grid jumpers and folk who already had their own grids. HG Safari is aimed at people active and experienced in Second Life, and maybe InWorldz, or anywhere in opensim from Kitely and OSGrid to the tiniest boutique grids, but who have not been out hypergridding very much. 

Reticulation on OSGrid

It's a rip-roaring clusterfuck of lag, miscommunication, disappearing skins, linden hair, and sheer determination. Not for the impatient or the faint hearted.

It's a slow process getting people started, and the aim is to assist SL artists and creators to reach a level of hypergridding savvy and new friends so they'll be able to make the most of the free uploads and masses of space that Open Sim offers, and then encourage and accompany their friends to see what's out there.